Field

Analysis

Limits, curves, and what happens when you keep going.
πθ1−1sin

A sine wave is a circle seen from the side

Sine is introduced as a ratio in a right triangle, which is true and explains nothing about why its graph is a wave. There is a better picture.

0.511.522.5301234xysum ≈ 5.790exact = 6.300

Adding up rectangles until they stop being rectangles

The integral is defined as a limit of sums of rectangles. The definition is exact, the picture is honest about what it costs, and the gap between them is the whole subject.

-111 term-113 terms-117 terms-1121 terms

A square wave built entirely out of round ones

Add enough sine waves together and flat tops and vertical cliffs appear from nothing. Almost — there is a 9% overshoot that never goes away, and it is not a bug.

-2-1.5-1-0.50.511.52123456xyheight 0.37slope 0.37height 1.00slope 1.00height 2.72slope 2.72height 4.95slope 4.95

The curve that is its own slope

There is exactly one shape of exponential curve whose steepness at every point equals its height at that point. The number that produces it is 2.71828…, and it was not chosen for elegance.

246810121416182022240123ntotal 3.776term 0.042

A sum whose terms vanish and whose total does not

Add a half, a third, a quarter, and keep going. The terms shrink to nothing and the total passes every number there is — but so slowly that no computation will ever watch it happen.

-8-6-4-22468-2-112xsin xdegree 9 is out by 4.7e+0 at x = 5.76

One point's worth of information

A Taylor series claims that everything a function does, everywhere, is encoded in its behaviour at a single point. That claim is extraordinary, it is often true, and the cases where it fails are the interesting ones.

0.511.522.512345xh = 1.2 slope 3.2000h = 0.8 slope 2.8000h = 0.5 slope 2.5000h = 0.28 slope 2.2800h = 0.12 slope 2.1200

The slope of a single point

A slope needs two points. A derivative is the slope at one. The construction that bridges the gap is a sequence of secants, and the whole difficulty of calculus is in what "the limit of that sequence" is allowed to mean.

246810121416182022240.60.70.80.91terms usedln 2 = 0.69315odd sums, from aboveeven sums, from below

The same terms, in a different order, adding to whatever is asked

Flip alternate signs in the harmonic series and it converges. Reorder the terms — add nothing, remove nothing — and it converges to any number chosen in advance. Addition stops being commutative, and the picture shows where it goes.

00.511.522.5300.51fthis areaheight 1.12900.511.522.5300.511.522.5where the area stopsarea so farslope 1.129

Area is the undoing of slope

Two operations invented for unrelated reasons — measuring a region and measuring a rate — turn out to be inverse. The picture is two panels sharing one axis, and the claim is that the lower curve's steepness is the upper curve's height.

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